Spain austerity protest: ‘Things got worse than last year’

The situation in Spain is deteriorating as the money it got from Europe went to bailing out banks which continue to foreclose homes, but not help ordinary people, anti-austerity activist Clara Valverde told RT.

RT:Last year's Dignity March in Spain
against austerity saw a huge turnout. Why are people taking to
the streets again, twelve months on?

Clara Valverde: Things have got worse not
better. For instance now we are up to 500 foreclosures a day and
people are hungry, children are hungry and for the first time
since we have democracy people are dying in the winter time
because of the lack of heating because they cannot afford heating
in their homes. This is a much worse situation than a year ago.

RT:Is it really fair to compare the social
situation in Spain and Greece, as opposition politicians and
rally organizers do?

CV: Obviously in Greece they were worse off, but
this is between bad and very bad, so yes there are a lot of
similarities in terms of the impact of the austerity measures.
I’m thinking of Julia, a woman in Madrid, who is 80 who has
cancer who has been foreclosed who went to city hall to protest
and got fined for protesting and now she is having got her
electricity cut... This is like in Greece very much.

RT:What do you expect the government to do
realistically if the money is not there?

CV: Well the money is there. The thing is that
the money is going to bailout the banks and not the people. The
money that they asked from Europe went to bailout Bankia, the
bank that is foreclosing 500 homes a day. So the money is there
and if we look at corruption, at where the money is and the fact
that the rich don’t pay taxes their money is in other countries…
So the money is there, the question is the willingness to
organize it.

RT:You’ve said the situation has
deteriorated. Is the government not listening and not showing the
willingness?

CV: They are not willing because there is a
right-wing party; they really act like the civil servants of the
Troika, of the big banks. They are not really there for the
people, it’s not that they can’t it’s that they don’t really want
to.

RT:Why are alternative parties like the
leftist Podemos group gaining popularity in Spain? Are they
posing a threat to the government?

CV: They are a big threat because that’s all the
government talks about since Podemos started, and it’s been a
small party but now it’s huge. Podemos is a wonderful threat to
the government and people are outraged and not just at the
national and regional level, in some places Podemos is party
number one, in some places number two so they really have come on
fast, but also at a municipal level there are new parties similar
to Podemos. So everywhere now people in Spain are organizing to
really try to change this because this cannot go on.

The statements, views and opinions expressed in this column are solely those of the author and do not necessarily represent those of RT.